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Sir George Somers (1554–1610)

Sir George Somers was an
English privateer and sea captain who served as admiral of a large resupply voyage to
Jamestown in 1609; his
ship the Sea Venture was wrecked and its passengers stranded for almost ten months on the islands of
Bermuda. A native of Dorset, in
the southwest of England, Somers preyed on Spanish shipping in the West Indies during
his early years, earning enough money to buy land and build a nice home near his
native town of Lyme Regis. Described as being "a lion at sea," he was knighted by
King James I in 1603, and in
1606 was named in the Virginia
Company of London's royal
charter to settle Virginia. In 1609, Somers sailed on the Sea Venture, the resupply fleet's flagship that was shipwrecked in the
Bermudas. There, despite disagreements with the governor, Sir Thomas Gates, Somers helped lead the castaways
in their return to Virginia in May 1610. A few weeks later, a new governor, Thomas West, baron De La Warr,
ordered Somers back to Bermuda to gather supplies. He died there early in November.
His nephew Matthew Somers buried his heart and entrails in Bermuda—soon after named
the Somers Islands—before returning the rest of his body to England for burial. MORE...

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Early Years

Somers was born at Berne Farm in Lyme Regis, Dorset, in the southwest of England,
in April 1554. He was the third surviving son of John and Alice Somer (or Somers).
Very little is known about his early life, but by the time he was in his
mid-thirties, Somers seems to have been engaged in privateering missions against
Spanish shipping in the West Indies. In 1587 he used the booty earned on one such
mission to purchase more than one hundred acres of land near his birthplace; he
called it Berne Manor. Through the 1590s, his reputation as a competent sea
captain grew steadily. He was a senior officer in Sir Amyas Preston's audacious
raid on the coast of South America in 1595, when English forces captured, sacked,
and burned San Jago de Leon, a Spanish town on the site of present-day Caracas,
Venezuela. The raid produced only a limited financial return, but was described by
one of Preston's men, Robert Davie, in "The Victorious Voyage of Captaine Amias
Preston now knight, and Captaine George Sommers to the West India, begun in March
1595." Richard Hakluyt
(the younger) published the account in an edition of his Principall Navigations, Voiages and Discoveries of the English
Nation.

In 1597, Somers took part in the Islands Voyage, in which an English fleet led by
Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, and Sir Walter Raleigh attacked the Portuguese-held
Azores. Although the raid was unsuccessful, Somers managed to capture a prize
while sailing back to Dartmouth. Later he was entrusted with the command of some
of England's best warships, including the Swiftsure and the
Warspite. He captained the former in a 1601 attack on a
Spanish invasion fleet off Kinsale, in the south of Ireland, and the latter in
1602, again at the Azores. According to Thomas Fuller in his History of the Worthies of England (1662), Somers "was a lamb on land, so
patient that few could anger him: and (as if entering a ship he assumed a new
nature) a lion at sea, so passionate few could please him."

As Somers's prestige in naval circles grew, so did his wealth. An inventory of his
Berne Manor estate after his death included well-constructed beds, embroidered
Indian coverlets, silk damask cushions, and carpets of all kinds and colors, among
them a "faire Turkey carpet of greate price." In July 1603, just prior to the
coronation of James I, Somers was knighted in the royal garden at Whitehall. The
next year he was elected to Parliament from Lyme Regis. And in 1606 he became the
town's mayor.

Probably early in the 1580s, Somers married Joan Heywood, the daughter of Philip
Heywood, a Lyme Regis farmer. Joan Somers died in 1618 and the couple had no
children.

The Somers Islands

On April 10, 1606, Somers's name—with those
of Sir Thomas Gates, Richard Hakluyt (the younger), and Edward Maria Wingfield, among
others—appeared at the top of the charter granted by James I to the Virginia
Company of London. Somers did not accompany the initial 104 men who in 1607
settled at Jamestown. Instead, on June 2, 1609, he was aboard the flagship Sea Venture (or Sea Adventure), one
of nine ships that disembarked from England on a resupply mission to Virginia.
(Somers's nephew Matthew Somers sailed as master on another ship the elder Somers
partly owned, the Swallow.) While Gates would serve as the
colony's interim governor under the new second charter, Somers was appointed admiral
of Virginia, making him the mission's commander at sea. He was, in the words of
William Strachey, "a
Gentleman of approved assurednesse, and ready knowledge in Sea-faring actions,
having often carried command, and chiefe charge in many Ships Royall of her
Majesties."

On July 24, the fleet was scattered by a violent storm in the Atlantic, and the
Sea Venture, also carrying Gates, Strachey, and the Reverend Richard Bucke, sprang
a serious leak. Everyone took a turn at pumping and baling until, on July 28,
Somers, "when no man dreamed of such happinesse, had discovered, and cried Land."
What he saw was a fishhook-shaped group of islands, called the Bermudas, situated
about 640 miles east of present-day Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. Captain Christopher
Newport guided the ship as close to shore as possible before running
aground on reefs. Largely destroyed, the Sea Venture
nevertheless remained upright, and the ship's crew, passengers, and cargo were all
able to be unloaded.

The following ten months were far from happy. Although the Bermudas were known to
mariners, they were far from the most heavily frequented Atlantic sea lanes, and
the castaways reckoned that, if they were to escape the islands, they would have
to construct new vessels to replace their wrecked ship. In the meantime, there
were serious problems over command. As governor, Gates considered
himself in command, while Somers argued that the islands were merely a staging
post on an as-yet-uncompleted voyage for which he, as admiral, bore
responsibility.

Nothing about Somers suggests that he was a divisive man, but factions emerged
among the castaways and the tensions occasionally erupted into mutinies and even
violence. One account of the Bermuda stay observed that "the sea and
land-commandours, being alienated one from another (a qualetye over common to the
English)," created "jealousies" and "a separation of the company." The writer
charged Somers and Gates with having "an affection of disgraceinge one another,
and crossing their designes." In March 1610, Gates executed Henry Paine, a
gentleman who had planned to escape the island with some stolen supplies. Several
of Paine's alleged conspirators also were executed.

In the meantime, according to William
Strachey, Somers "coasted the Ilands" and charted them, "and daily fished, and
hunted for our whole company." By the end of April 1610, the castaways were
finished constructing two seaworthy vessels, the Deliverance and the Patience, the latter of which
was designed by Somers. They set sail on May 10, leaving two men behind, either
out of mutual distrust or, possibly, to maintain a plausible English claim to the
islands.

Somers's leadership among the Sea Venture castaways would
be remembered in the early English name for the islands. In a letter to Dudley
Carleton dated February 12, 1610, John Chamberlain of London noted renewed
interest in trade with the Bermudas, which had been "first christened Virginiola
as a member of that plantation, but now lastly resolved to be called Sommer Iland
as well in respect of the continuall temporal ayre, as in remembrance of Sir Gorge
Sommers that died there."

Virginia

After ten days at sea, the Deliverance and the Patience reached
Point Comfort in the Chesapeake
Bay on May 21, 1610, and, three days later, Jamestown. There, Somers,
Gates, and the rest found only sixty survivors of a famine that came to be known
as the Starving Time. (The
fort at Jamestown had begun the winter with about 240 settlers.) Within two weeks,
Gates decided that Virginia should be abandoned. But on June 8, while he and the
colonists sailed down the James
River with the intention of traveling to Newfoundland and then to
England, they encountered the ship carrying Governor Thomas West, baron De La
Warr, and a year's worth of supplies. They returned to Jamestown that evening.

Governor De La Warr soon ordered Captain Samuel Argall, in the Discovery, and
Somers, in the Patience, to return to Bermuda for
additional supplies and to recover the two men left there. En route, Argall
encountered violent storms and wound up off Cape Cod, where he loaded his pinnace
with fish before sailing down the coast. Somers, meanwhile, reunited with his
nephew Matthew Somers, made it to Bermuda; however, he died there on November 9,
1610.

In his Generall Historie (1624), Captain John Smith makes a plausible case that Somers
perished of exhaustion: "but such was his diligence with his extraordinary care,
paines and industry to dispatch his businesse, and the strength of his body not
answering the ever memorable courage of his minde," that Somers died "[i]n that
very place we now call Saint Georges towne … whereof the place taketh the name."
Another account claimed he died "of a surfeit in eating of a pig," and it is true
that wild pigs were plentiful on the islands.

Whatever the case, Somers asked to be
buried in Bermuda, but Matthew Somers only partially complied. He removed Sir
George's heart and entrails and buried them under a simple cross. Then, without
the knowledge of superstitious sailors, he stored the rest of his uncle's body on
ship inside a cedar cask of whiskey. Rather than return to Virginia with
much-needed supplies, Somers sailed the Patience to
England, where he attempted to trade on his relative's fame for money from the
Virginia Company. When that plan failed, Somers took Sir George's pickled body
home to rest. On July 4, 1611, "with many vollies of shot, and the rites of a
Souldier," according to Smith, Somers was buried at Whitchurch Canonicorum, near
Berne Manor.

The Somers Island Company, named for Somers, operated as a subsidiary of the
Virginia Company from 1612 until 1615. (The company's third charter extended the
colony's boundaries to the Bermuda islands.) The first intentional English
settlers landed there on July 11, 1612.

Time Line

April 1554
- George Somers is born at Berne Farm in Lyme Regis, Dorset, in the southwest of England. He is the third surviving son of John and Alice Somer (or Somers).

1580s
- Probably during this time, George Somers marries Joan Heywood, the daughter of Philip Heywood, a farmer in Lyme Regis, Dorset, England. The couple will have no children.

1587
- George Somers uses the booty captured on a privateering mission against the Spanish to purchase more than one hundred acres of land near his birthplace in Lyme Regis, Dorset; he calls it Berne Manor.

1595
- George Somers serves as a senior officer in Sir Amyas Preston's audacious raid on the coast of South America, where the English forces capture, sack, and burn San Jago de Leon, a Spanish town on the site of present-day Caracas, Venezuela.

1597
- George Somers takes part in the Islands Voyage, in which an English fleet led by Robert Devereux, second earl of Essex, and Sir Walter Raleigh attacks the Portuguese-held Azores. The raid is unsuccessful, but Somers captures a prize while sailing home.

1601
- George Somers captains the Swiftsure as part of an attack on a Spanish invasion fleet off Kinsale, in the south of Ireland.

1602
- George Somers captains the Warspite as part of an English attack on the Portuguese-held Azores.

July 1603
- Just prior to the coronation of James I, George Somers is knighted in the royal garden at Whitehall.

1604
- Sir George Somers is elected to Parliament from Lyme Regis, Dorset.

1606
- Sir George Somers becomes the mayor of his hometown of Lyme Regis, Dorset.

April 10, 1606
- King James I grants the Virginia Company a royal charter dividing the North American coast between two companies, the Virginia Company of London and the Virginia Company of Plymouth, overseen by the "Counsell of Virginia," whose thirteen members are appointed by the king.

June 2, 1609
- The largest fleet England has ever amassed in the West—nine ships, 600 passengers, and livestock and provisions to last a year—leaves England for Virginia. Led by the flagship Sea Venture, the fleet's mission is to save the failing colony. Sir Thomas Gates heads the expedition.

July 24, 1609
- A hurricane strikes the nine-ship English fleet bound for Virginia on a rescue mission. The flagship Sea Venture is separated from the other vessels and irreparably damaged by the storm.

August 11, 1609
- Four ships reach Jamestown from England: Unity, Lion, Blessing, and Falcon. Two others are en route; two more were wrecked in a storm; and one, Sea Venture, was cast up on the Bermuda islands' shoals.

August 18, 1609
- Two ships reach Jamestown from England: Diamond and Swallow. Four others arrived a week earlier; two more were wrecked in a storm; and one, Sea Venture, survived by making its way south to the Bermuda islands. The Diamond may have brought with it disease that will contribute to the colony's high mortality rate.

March 1610
- Sir Thomas Gates, with the Sea Venture castaways on the Bermuda islands, executes the gentleman Henry Paine, who had planned to escape the island with stolen stores.

May 21, 1610
- Having been stranded in the Bermuda islands for nearly a year, the party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates arrives at Point Comfort in the Chesapeake Bay.

May 24, 1610
- The party of Virginia colonists headed by Sir Thomas Gates, , now aboard the Patience and Deliverance, arrives at Jamestown. They find only sixty survivors of a winter famine. Gates decides to abandon the colony for Newfoundland.

June 8, 1610
- Sailing up the James River toward the Chesapeake Bay and then Newfoundland, Jamestown colonists encounter a ship bearing the new governor, Thomas West, baron De La Warr, and a year's worth of supplies. The colonists return to Jamestown that evening.

November 9, 1610
- Sir George Somers dies on the Bermuda islands. His nephew Matthew Somers buries his heart and entrails there, then returns the body to England.

July 4, 1611
- Sir George Somers is buried at Whitchurch Canonicorum, near his home at Berne Manor in Dorset, England.

July 11, 1612
- The first intentional colonists arrive in Bermuda to secure the claim of the Somers Island Company, a subsidiary of the Virginia Company. England's intention to colonize the island chain came after a successful ten months spent in Bermuda by the shipwrecked survivors of the Sea Venture, bound for Virginia.